adventures in post production

Tag: intermediate

So you’ve maybe been in this situation before – you’re at a post facility, and you’re trying to move a file from one location to another on a server, and you’re prompted for a password. Or instead of moving the file, it copies when all you did was try to drag it from one location to another. Or you try to write to the file, but it won’t let you save your work. Sup with that? It’s user permissions, my friend. It’s really fun, you’re going to like it. Maybe you’ve never been in any of these situations and it doesn’t seem relevant right now. But trust me, for an assistant editor, this is a really useful thing to learn, and it will save your butt eventually.

There are two fundamental ways to bring media into Avid, and which one you should use depends on which program you intend to finish in. If you’re finishing in Avid or Baselight via Avid, then the AMA workflow is recommended, as it ensures you get a good relink and don’t lose any metadata. If you’re intending to finish anywhere else, then using a third party program is recommended, as it’s generally a faster and more reliable transcode than doing it in Avid, does not interfere with the relink (when properly executed), does not take over your system so you can continue to work in Avid while transcoding, and of course allows better options for doing dailies colour correction.

This workflow will use Black Magic’s amazing DaVinci Resolve to create master clips that are brought directly into Avid without consolidating or transcoding. This workflow was used in Resolve 12.5 and Avid 8.6 in OS X Yosemite, however I expect it to be stable in the current Resolve 14 and Avid 8.9 as well, in either OS X or Windows.